Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Varonis Platform comparison

Microsoft and Varonis are both solutions in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.1, while Varonis is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 12.5% mindshare in DSPM, compared to Varonis’s 8.4% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Varonis users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Read 78 Microsoft Defender for Cloud reviews

5,698 Views
109 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Varonis Platform

Read 14 Varonis Platform reviews

2,634 Views
1,060 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Varonis Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Varonis Platform compete in the enterprise security solutions category. Microsoft Defender seems to have the upper hand due to its seamless integration within the Microsoft ecosystem, offering comprehensive threat management and automated incident handling, although it comes with a higher complexity and cost. Varonis excels in data governance, providing centralized data management.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers AI-based threat detection, compliance policies, and seamless integration with Microsoft's ecosystem. It provides automated incident management and comprehensive visibility. Varonis Platform stands out with robust data security features, offering detailed insights into data access activities. It provides a unified reporting system and advanced sensitive data identification.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender needs enhancements in hierarchy management, external threat intelligence integration, reduction of false positives, and more granular policy application. Varonis could improve its interface navigation and reduce licensing costs. It should also improve integration with cloud services for better deployment flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender integrates well with public and hybrid clouds but poses challenges with its complex setup and inconsistent support quality. Varonis is effective in on-premises environments but users find support uneven, similar to Microsoft's service. Both platforms provide useful documentation but require improvement in support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender is considered expensive but offers good ROI through enhanced security with scalable pricing models. However, it is costly for smaller companies. Varonis is also expensive, attributed to its advanced capabilities and required infrastructure, making it more suitable for larger enterprises seeking sophisticated data security. Both deliver ROI through enhanced data protection.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Varonis Platform Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Varonis Platform

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 857,028 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

5th

Ranking in Compliance Management

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (6th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th)

Varonis Platform

Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

4th

Ranking in Compliance Management

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (10th), Data Governance (4th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Ransomware Protection (11th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 12.5%, down from 14.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 8.4%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps

Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

Read full review

Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Technical support is helpful."

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has significantly enhanced our overall security posture by approximately 20 to 25 percent."

"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."

"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."

"One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things."

"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."

"The most valuable features offer the latest threat detection and response capabilities."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand what's happening in our environment."

"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."

"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."

"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."

"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."

"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."

"The most important feature is remediation. In remediation support, there is no group permission. We'll go ahead and remediate the access from the Dell folder to the parent folder."

"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"The vulnerabilities are duplicated many times."

"Although Microsoft Defender for Cloud is based on security, I wish it went beyond providing assessments, reports, and generic steps. More detailed procedures would be helpful, especially for lower-level support staff."

"The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available."

"As an analyst, there is no way to configure or create a playbook to automate the process of flagging suspicious domains."

"No possibility to write or edit any capability."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"Customizing some of the compliance requirements based on individual needs seems like the biggest area of improvement. There should be an option to turn specific controls on and off based on how your solution is configured."

"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"

"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."

"The product is very complicated."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"It is significantly complex."

"There is one thing that if I add something manually, I get so many alerts. That's the biggest bad thing."

"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."

"It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features."

"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."

"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."

"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."

"Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."

"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."

"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?

Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The pricing is pretty standard.

See all answers

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area for improvement. Varonis requires more access permissions for its core function...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organization to protect it. We are looking for a solution that can scan our repositor...

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 20% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 14% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Varonis Platform

Compared 19% of the time

Cyera vs Varonis Platform

Compared 12% of the time

BigID vs Varonis Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Wiz vs Varonis Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs Varonis Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More Varonis Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

May 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform

May 2025

Download Varonis Platform product report

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

No data available

Interactive Demo

Microsoft

Demo not available

Varonis

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Varonis Platform specializes in network security and data monitoring with modules for alerting, data classification, and access management, benefiting environments like Microsoft 365.

Varonis is designed to secure data by auditing and tracking data movement. It leverages data alert and classification modules to identify and manage sensitive information. The platform enhances network security by alerting users to unexpected data modifications and deletions, crucial for effective data loss prevention. It supports unstructured data management, ensuring proper data access and permission controls. Known for its 24/7 support, Varonis offers comprehensive analytics and unified reporting, helping prevent data overexposure and facilitating compliance efforts.

What are the key features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Support: Provides round-the-clock assistance.
Data Monitoring: Tracks data activities efficiently.
Unified Reporting: Consolidates data access reports.
Data Classification: Identifies sensitive data effectively.
Permission Management: Simplifies managing access rights.
Behavior Analytics: Detects abnormal behavior patterns.

What benefits should be highlighted in user reviews?

Enhanced Security: Improves data protection measures.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting compliance standards.
Data Transparency: Offers clarity in data access activities.
Access Control: Ensures proper access to data.
Centralized Remediation: Eases remediation procedures.

Varonis Platform is widely utilized in industries needing stringent data confidentiality and management, such as finance and healthcare, for tracking data modifications and unauthorized access. Enterprises deploy it to manage permissions within large datasets, benefiting Microsoft 365 environments. While Varonis requires enhancements in cloud integration, the current deployment is often based on-premises, with attention to addressing the security needs and effective data handling for critical infrastructure.

Varonis

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Nottingham Building Society

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Varonis Platform

April 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Varonis Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Varonis Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Varonis Platform report.

See our list of best Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) vendors and best Compliance Management vendors.

We monitor all Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.